A solid crime drama programmer that's a lesser
Sherlock
Holmes knock-off.
It's directed by George King ("The Ticket of Leave
Man"/"The Face at
the
Window"/"At Dawn We Die"), who keeps it fast moving,
classy,
suspenseful
and comical. It's based on the novel "The Mystery of
Caversham Square"
by Pierre Quiroule and written by A.R.
Rawlinson.

While in Shanghai, adventurer Granite Grant (David
Farrar)
gets mugged
before embarking on a steamer to London. Miraculously
he lives long
enough
to tell his friend Paul Duvall (Bradley Watts) that
the ones
responsible
belong to the world's most dangerous criminal
organization, The Black
Quorum.
Grant has been targeted for the little he knows about
the shadowy
terrorist
group, but since the police won't listen he feels that
London amateur
sleuth
Sexton Blake (George Cuzon) should be contacted and
that once he finds
out who the leader is that will be the end of the
violent ring.

In London, Duvall is killed by a South American
poison dart
blowgun
in Blake's office before he can talk to him, but
leaves a clue written
in invisible ink on a blank piece of paper. When Blake
receives little
cooperation from Scotland Yard's Inspector Bramley
(Norman Pierce), he
takes the matter into his own hands with the help of
his bumbling
assistant
Tinker (Tony Sympson) and an attractive French amateur
sleuth named
Julie
(Greta Gynt). She gets the leader of the crime gang,
the
multi-millionaire
stamp collector Michael Larron (Tod Slaughter), all
hot and bothered
that
he risks everything to possess her. When she refuses
to be his moll, he
places her in his Death Chamber of Serpents and it's
up to Blake to
rescue
her.

Tod Slaughter is a trip as the perverse villain
drooling
over both
stamps and Julie, and decked out when meeting gang
members in a spiffy
black robe with a snake embroided on its front and a
fashionable
KKK-like
hood. Like Vincent Price, Slaughter can make a not too
original
low-budget
B film fun to watch.